Hey, Babe
by penwielder62
Summary: What starts as a slip of the tongue becomes a fond force of habit. The progression of a particular endearment in the lives of Erin Lindsay and Jay Halstead.


So in the wake of CPD 3x15 last week, I got a request over on Tumblr for the progression of Erin, Jay, and "babe", from the first instance to the ease seen at the end of 3x15. Initially, I thought it'd be a few hundred words and a couple days worth of project. Flash forward to now, six days later and 3k+ words. Ha. Ha. Oops.

There are five vignettes with a short prose retake on the Molly's scene from 3x15 at the very end. The second installment was somewhat inspired by one of my meta bullets (kudos to those who remember it). And PTSD!Jay does make an appearance in the course, so you are duly warned.

Random: it's kind of like "Hey, Jude" except not at all.

(Credit to the creators of C _hicago P.D._ where it is due.)

* * *

The third rumble of her belly in ten minutes finally gets Erin's attention. It's almost eleven at night, she's finally getting drowsy, and she's comfortable, leaning back against her partner with his legs boxing in her own and causing a source of amusement during commercial breaks. Erin, refusing to take the blame for ticklish feet, had offered, quite magnanimously, to go sit at the other end of the couch.

The shell of her ear is still warm from his offended nip.

Needless to say, it's a very inconvenient time for the munchies.

A quiet breath escapes her. Fine. Jay, engrossed in their late night movie, doesn't notice for several long moments as she pinches at his hands where he's laced them together across her stomach.

"Jay, come on, I'm starving," Erin lets her head back to rest on his shoulder, lower lip jutting in some semblance of a pout that gets him out of the movie a lot faster then digging her nails into his skin.

His gaze drops straight down a couple of inches and yes, she definitely has his attention now. "What did you say?"

Leaning in a fraction, just to tease him with the proximity, Erin smirks. "Let me up, I'm hungry."

Jay blinks a couple of times before his brain cells reconnect and he casts her a flat, unamused look at her underhanded tactics. His grip does loosen though and Erin extricates herself with care, unable to help from grinning but not wanting to add injury to insult by elbowing him in the gut.

If there's an extra swing to her hips as she walks away, well—Jay doesn't call her on it.

Pulling open the fridge, Erin wrinkles her nose at the contents. Her partner had decided that it was time for a monthly clean of her refrigerator just recently enough that there's no questionable but appealing leftovers buried in its depths. She tries not to hold it against him.

Poking around for a few minutes, Erin hums to herself as she selects a couple of candidates. Holding the two Tupperware up to the light, she attempts to determine the contents.

"Hey, babe, do you feel more like last week's lasagna or that disaster of a keesh from Monday?"

It slips out before she realizes what's happening and by that point, there's no taking it back. Erin half hopes that Jay wasn't paying attention in true male fashion—she isn't _embarrassed_ , per say, but pet names have never been their thing and for good reason.

They have enough difficulty keeping the lingering touches that abound at home under wraps at work. Adding terms of endearment would be chancing fate.

Erin let's out a quiet sigh when she hears the TV program pause. Luck is not on her side tonight. Jay rounds the island a few moments later and she's about to start saying that _you heard that wrong_ but he's grinning, full and true, and the words die on her tongue. How can she try and deny it, in the face of the playful spark to his gaze and that familiar quirk to a brow that spells certain teasing?

"Erin," he coaxes, drawing near to pull the Tupperware from her grasp and set them on the counter. His hands find her hips, solid and warm, as he attempts to keep his mirth from bubbling over. It doesn't work very well, because he lets out a short laugh before he can speak again. "Say it again."

Because two can play this game, Erin pats his chest and obliges with an innocent blink, "Old lasagna or salty keesh, Halstead. Those are your choices."

After that, it becomes a thing. Erin will start addressing her partner just to realize Jay is watching her with the most expectant look and begins to catch on after the first handful of instances. The oddest part is that she _wants_ to try saying it again, to feel the curl of warmth through her chest and watch the delight dawn on his face, but calling Jay "babe" again at this point is also admitting defeat.

And that just won't do.

/

The quiet groan of the bedroom door brings Erin around from her drowsing enough to crack an eye open, the one not mashed into the pillow. It'd taken her some time to adjust, yet again, to the smell of Hank's house—a hint of Camille lingers, even after all these years—but exhaustion won out. She'd squeezed Hank's hand, kissed Jay, then went upstairs to collapse in her old bed.

Listening to the creaks across the floor boards now, she can track Jay's progress around the room as he gets ready for bed. It's been an hour since she left him and Hank to their own devices and by all reasoning she should be asleep by now, but even with her coat stuffed against the window, the room is fricking _cold_. While she might love Chicago with all her heart, she hates the wind like nothing else.

Jay slips out of the room again and Erin almost whines, burrowing deeper beneath the faded comforter. In her cross eyed packing before leaving her powerless apartment, extra blankets hadn't made it into the car. Her partner will be the perfect substitute, a living heater to curl around, but he's dragging his feet about getting into bed—dental hygiene shouldn't be so important at this hour.

Settling with her back to the room and her knees bumping against the wall, Erin's fuzzy irritation fades as sleep washes back in with gentle waves. She always feels at home in Hank's house. Her apartment has privacy but this house has _safety_. Safety in where she turned her life around, where she finally found a family, where everything that's important to her now began.

The lilac-painted door protests as Jay shuffles in and locks it behind himself. The grinding click resounds but Erin's not so far gone that she can't appreciate the foresight. Hank's not nosy but it's better safe than sorry.

Twisting her head but lacking energy to turn over and face the room, Erin's mumbles words are almost slurred. "Come to bed, babe. I'm cold."

Complying without protest, Jay eases down onto the narrow mattress. Unfortunately, it's the same one she slept on as a teenager and has proven to be less forgiving on her back these days. Erin reaches back to finds his arm and Jay jumps when she grazes the sensitive spot at the bottom of his ribs. He's anticipating her want, though, even as she mumbles an apology. His limb is heavy and warm, curving around her torso and drawing Erin a couple inches closer.

The diminishment of space is enough that his every inhale brushes against her back and she knows her flyaway hair is tickling his chin by the puff of air that hits her scalp.

After so many months together and three years as partners, it's easy to fit together like puzzle pieces. Listening and responding to requests that don't find voice. There are days when what they have, who they are together, feels surreal.

Ducks are also on the list of items with dreamlike qualities, so Erin doesn't quite trust her own judgment at the moment.

The chuckle that sounds low in his chest is jarring, forcing her eyes open again. "What?"

"I can't believe you actually slipped up _now_. Two months later. _Babe_." The grin is audible on his voice even if she can't see his face. They both know he's going to _savor_ this victory.

The emotions behind her breastbone are caught somewhere between amusement at his awe and first-degree homicide. Actually, scratch that. "Where's your gun? I'll shoot you instead and get a couple hours of sleep before your corpse gets cold."

Now Jay is really laughing, shaking with the effort to contain it. "Alright, alright, I'm sorry."

Erin caves to the desire to kick him in the shins before dragging her frozen feet up his legs in retaliation and his answering yelp, although strangled in attempt not to rouse Hank, is satisfying.

/

It's hard to determine what rouses her in the blackness of Jay's bedroom, but she's conscious and has no idea why. Taking a moment to get her bearings, Erin reaches across the bed to find Jay but all that meets her questing fingertips is cold sheets.

"Babe? Jay?" Erin croaks, pushing up on her forearms, pillow still tempting behind her but she's rapidly moving past the lethargy of sleep. It's been weeks since Jay's last nightmare but after today—none of them will ever forget the anguish of the surviving brother—she'd been tensed for Jay's subconscious to catch him at this low point.

Vision finally adjusting to the low light, Erin searches the room and the what portion of the apartment she can see from the bed but it's the forced exhale that grabs her attention. Although sheltered by the darkness, she can see Jay leaning over the bathroom sink, shoulders tensed and head bent.

There's no avoiding the way her gut turns over as she pushes upright. The wrinkled sheets pool in her lap, exposed skin prickling as cool air hits it. Crawling to Jay's side of the bed, she lets her legs over the side with a smooth movement, ready to slide into motion if she needs to.

There's still a scar near his spine from the night she'd had to throw her body against his, foot hooking behind his ankle to topple him, taking a vase with them that cut into his skin. Gasping, pleading, trying to get him to wake up before he hurt both of them. Hank had all but ordered the time off, for both of them, after she called him with the sunrise. The case had hit too close to home and they're all alert when anything related to the military lands on their desks now.

"Jay, it's alright." It's a fight to disconnect from that incident and understand that _this_ and _that_ do not have to be the same. Will not be the same.

Erin knows what words will bring him back to her, knows that her voice is his lifeline, but it doesn't mean fear doesn't squeeze in her chest during every flashback, every nightmare. What if there's a time where she _can't_ get through?

Eyes closing for a brief moment, Erin lets the rawness burning in her chest taint her voice, telling him with more than words that she's here. _I am here and I chose you_. "I'm right here. You're safe. I promise, you're safe."

Muscles in his back tighten visibly as Jay wrestles with the demons that have been haunting him longer than she's known him. A panted breath, the creak of the counter as it bears more of his weight.

She gives him time to form words, to find a way to communicate to her, with her. But none is forthcoming and that's when Erin moves. She hates that she has to keep her motions slow, dragging her feet across the floor and speaking to him in a low murmur the entire way so he won't be caught off guard. _You never deserved this. You agreed to go but you don't deserve to go through this_.

"Come on, Jay, talk to me," her voice cracks at odd points, damaged from a long day of crowd control and interviews, but it's never made a difference to her partner.

He's always been able to hear her, understand her.

Jay wavers on his feet, hands curled around the edges of the sink—too tight—and Erin's first touch is light. Ghosting across his shoulder blades, trailing down his spine and firming by the time she reaches the small of his back. Leaning her head against his temple and covering his hand with her own, Erin breathes in the smell of him.

Deep breath in and back out. _Come on, Jay._

Repeating the exercise, he finally follows suit, body shuddering under her palm.

It's another hour before they make it back to bed for precious few more hours of sleep before work. Erin does her best to envelop Jay, settling so she can take the weight of him, cradling him between her legs and nails smoothing down his back to ground them both. In turn, Jay exhales warm against her skin, one hand trapped beneath her and an ear pressed to her heartbeat.

She doesn't sleep again that night but he does and that's all that matters.

/

They slip up first around Antonio, arriving early to the office before everyone but him. Hank is always on time, Ruzek dependably tardy by a perpetual five minutes, seven on a bad day, Atwater goes back and forth, and no one ever sees when Alvin comes or go. He's just there when he needs to be. And it's Erin's personal belief that Mouse has just moved into the basement, because he's _perpetually_ there.

"I'd say good morning, but nothing about that stack is looking good. How's it going?" Erin offers as a greeting to Antonio, eying the pile of case files on his desk as she slides out of her jacket and takes her seat.

The look he casts her is well short of amusement. "It was four days off. How can this much paperwork accumulate in _four days_?"

Jay snorts from across the bullpen, pulling his drawer out to find his gun. It's always his first action upon arriving at the office; stow away his personal piece, extract the department issue Luger, and attend to basic weapon maintenance. "How many years have you been a cop again, old man? Shouldn't you be used to this by now?"

Their teammate now pins Jay with a lowered brow, putting down the folder in his hand. "How about you and me take this up at the gym tonight, kid, and I'll show you how _old_ I am."

Although raising his hands in the picture of surrender, Jay's laugh is full and not repentant in the least. "I'll pass, thanks, but you're welcome to run down the next suspect. Since you're apparently just as youthful as the rest of us."

Antonio considers him with narrowed eyes for a long moment before lifting the coffee mug on his desk and holding it out in Jay's direction. "Since we've established who's the leading detective in this situation, make yourself useful, Halstead."

Erin watches on in amusement, tapping a pen against her lips, as her partner considers for a long moment, his hands still resting on his dismantled gun before he shrugs.

"Sure, why not." The space between the two men's' desks is crossed in a couple of strides and Antonio plays cat-and-mouse with Jay for a few moments, keeping the mug just out of reach. Willing to play along, Jay glances at Erin while lunging to wrest the cup away, asking, "You want anything, babe?"

Jay freezes, Erin fumbles her pen, and Antonio gains the expression of someone who _knows_ they've just uncovered a particularly juicy piece of blackmail.

Truth be told, she's not _surprised_ , per se, that it slipped out. As she'd feared, when the first endearment had been of her own aimless remark, it had been a slippery slope that they'd both gone tumbling down. A scene like this was bound to happen, sooner or later.

But it's hard to decide if it's a _good_ thing or a _bad_ thing that it's just Antonio here.

"Alright, let's hear it," Jay says with a longsuffering grimace after a lengthy silence from the older man that unnerves them both.

"You both are going to get so much grief from Voight when he hears about this," Antonio laughs, pressing his coffee mug into Jay's chest. "Coffee, _sweetie-pie._ "

Oh, they're definitely never going to hear the end of it.

/

True to Antonio's prediction, it is only a matter of time before Hank finds out—but only after the rest of their unit picks up on the slight forward shift in their relationship.

Antonio might have been the first, but then Ruzek caught them planning their weekend in the locker room— _Come on, babe, we've never had this much time during baseball season. Just this one game?_ Atwater was crawling underneath his desk looking for a dropped thumbtack when a busy week caught up to them— _I hope you're prepared to come over to my place tonight, babe, because I just spent all day watching you kick in doors._

Kevin was swift to shove his chair to stop the conversation before it went any further and Erin had gotten a good chuckle out of the fact that he was more embarrassed than they were. And they never discuss Alvin.

Then, the inevitable happens.

Erin tromps up the stairs in the wake of Jay's trying-to-prove-something, two-step vaulting, a huff of amusement leaving her as she shakes her head in disbelief at the tail end of their discussion. "You nitpick over my eating habits and you're the one who spent his two years on patrol eating McDonald's? I never thought you'd stoop so low, babe."

It takes her a moment to realize that Hank has the team gathered and everyone has turned to watch their entrance—in a perfect position to catch every word of her closing remarks.

"Halstead, Lindsay, nice of you to join us." There's a cool note to Voight's tone that spells a _conversation_ in their near future.

Sharing a glance with her partner, Erin goes to her desk, putting her disquiet about how Hank might respond on the back burner as she and Jay present the information they'd gathered during their interview to the team.

The case is not fast-moving but the workload is heavy—interviews, running down leads, keeping the peace with Organized Crime, who feel it should be their case but the chief is making everyone play together on this. Erin knows how long Hank's memory lasts and she and Jay's little _display_ will be addressed, it's just a matter of when.

Of course, her partner gets dragged out for guy's night— _hey, we can't just abandon a brother!_ Ruzek protests when she threatens murder—before Voight can corner them both in his office so it's just her, idly putting the finishing touches on her report, when Hank gets back from meeting with Sergeant Minter and the chief.

"Let's you and me talk, Erin," he rumbles on his way past her desk.

Trailing in his wake with apprehension settling low in her gut, Erin tries, "Hank—"

"Before you get all up in arms, I get it. You're in a relationship but you also work together, and the lines blur. It's been a hard year on both of you and I won't fault you for slipping up. But I do expect you both to remain professional when you're in this district, on the clock. Understood?"

Erin nods her agreement, relief pulling at the corner of her mouth. They're not off scot-free—Hank will be watching them in the next few weeks—but this had gone better than she'd anticipated. "Yeah, I got it. I'll talk to Jay."

"Good. Have you eaten? That diner down on 6th is getting a new burger on the menu."

/

When Erin's phone lights up with a contact photo of a familiar smile, she can't help the pleasure that spills into her smile. The rest of the girls are eyeing her reaction—oh, they all _know_ —and she doesn't really care.

They're a safe distance from the district and off-duty to boot, so Erin feels safe to pick up with an easy, adoring, "Hey, babe. You got the munchies yet?"

" _Not yet, but it's dead boring here and I wanted to hear my girl's voice for a few minutes._ " He sounds tired but glad to be talking to her. To say the least, it's a shared sentiment.

And that's how it goes.

* * *

Thank you for perusing this scrawl! Comments, critiques, and concerns are always welcome.


End file.
